He certainly had resources. District attorneys in his pocket. Law enforcement officers who owed him favors. Entire systems he could manipulate with a single phone call.
The more I’d learned about Victor Kane over the past several months, the more I realized falsifying a police report was child’s play to him.
But I refused to get my hopes up. I didn’t think I’d survive losing Sarah again.
“Are you sure?” I asked Ariana, fighting to push down all emotion. Feelings would only get in the way. I needed to be methodical. Clear. Practical. “What exactly did he say?”
Her gaze floated to Victor’s body before returning to me. “That he didn’t kill her. That she was chosen.”
“Chosen?” I repeated, the syllables heavy. “Chosen for what?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is when I accused him of killing Sarah because she learned about his trafficking operation, he laughed this crazed, maniacal laugh, then said he hadn’t killed her. That she was chosen.” Her throat bobbed. “Like me.”
“Like you?” I repeated.
She slowly nodded.
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
My mind raced, grasping for logic. For something concrete to anchor myself to. But the more I learned, the more uncertain I felt.
“He didn’t explicitly say she’s alive. Did he?”
I hated myself for clinging to this technicality. The idea of Sarah being alive was a double-edged sword. I’d already made my peace with her death, with the regret of never really knowing my daughter.
But if she was alive and had been suffering through God knows what these past six months, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive myself for simply accepting the narrative that she’d died, allowing me to aim my rage for my failings at someone else.
If I hadn’t been so focused on revenge, maybe I would have stopped to consider the possibility she might still be out there.
But I hadn’t.
This felt like my mother and Spencer all over again. I hadn’t fought hard enough for them. Hadn’t protected them from my father.
Because of that, Spencer froze to death all alone. And my mother put a gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.
“Not in so many words,” Ariana replied, her shaky voice cutting through my thoughts. “Just that he didn’t kill her and she was ‘chosen’. He could have been bullshitting me. But…” She shook her head. “I don’t think he was. Over the years, I’ve learned to tell when he was trying to manipulate or gaslight me. He was telling the truth. He had that same cocky smirk on his face he got whenever he held the upper hand. Whenever he outsmarted someone.”
I stared past Ariana toward Victor’s body, stopping on the word carved onto his torso, the bleeding lines stark against his white flesh.
Weak.
But it wasn’t just a word.
It was a reckoning.
Retribution for years of abuse.
In my opinion, he got off easy. If it were up to me, I would have done everything in my power to draw out his torment. To bring him to the brink of death, then pull him back just to make him suffer more. To make him endure everything Ariana had for years.
But Victor wasn’t mine to seek vengeance on.
Watching Ariana plunge that knife into him made me realize that.
“What should we do about him?” she asked, her voice filled with worry and dread.
This wasn’t some nameless Bratva soldier or a corrupt doctor.
